essay on TOWARDS GREATER HEIGHTS
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People go through life in different stages allowing us to learn and grow. We all start somewhere somehow and at some point the single step we started off leaps us to greater heights that one will never probably imagine. Dreams and aspirations we have are influenced by the many factors around us. The “moments” arising from our relationship with our family, relatives, friends and all others that we grew up with provide us with engaging and lifelong learning experiences.
I recall in my childhood learning and writing my first ABCs from my mother. She would painstakingly dedicate many hours during the day or night time to teached me how to read and write my vowels and consonants. I can sensed that at some point my mom would start to lose her patience because I just could not grasp everything at once. My mom continued to labor and to teach me everyday ensuring that I learned in bits and pieces. There were times that she began to lose her temper and yelled at me but would eventually “say sorry” at the end of our learning session. In retrospect, I feel that what I am now is greatly influenced by that “moment of saying sorry” to me because I have learned the value of “humility, care and love”. I think that it was pretty challenging perhaps to teach me my first ABCs at that time, so to speak. While struggling hard to learn as much as I could, I eventually learned how to read and write which in my mind was a big achievement and success for both of us. I saw in my mom’s eyes how glad and satisfied she was with the efforts she rendered to help me read and write my first ABCs.
She provided opportunities for me to learn more by buying books for beginners like me. I also learned how to write legibly because she would always make sure that I completed the practice sets she prepared everyday. It had became more fun rather than a boring reading and writing session. The motivation was just so great that I started to even do those that had not been assigned to me yet. And yes, my mom was so pleased with my efforts too.
As I continued to move on to another significant stage of my life in the Philippines which was my adolescent years in high school, I remembered a novel that was a “compulsory” class requirement. Just like learning my first ABCs from my mom, this is a book that must be learned and assimilated whether I like it or not. At first there was resistance on my part to read it as I found the title of the novel itself to be boring and does not sound exciting to me. In my mind what is there to learn from this novel. However, being compulsory, I did not have the choice except to start reading and go through it painstakingly. What was surprising was that the novel that was boring at first became interesting in the end just like my ABCs.
I believe that all things in life begin in a single step, whether it was my ABCs, or walking a thousand mile journey. For me this single step, my ABC’s, enabled me go to greater heights. I know to some this may seem like an insignificant step in life; however, for me I believe this step paved the way to my future.